


you've got my heart in a headlock

by womanaction



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 04:43:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11154486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: Abed encounters an unexpected error following the events of "Virtual Systems Analysis."





	you've got my heart in a headlock

“And – FREEZE!” Reggie finishes grandly. The Inspector smiles mysteriously.

Fade to black.

He powers down the simulation, the Inspector’s smile still a hint on the corner of his lips. Troy is laughing jubilantly. obviously thrilled. “That was the best simulation ever!” he enthuses. “And that cliffhanger, ugh, Abed, you’re killing me.”

“It was pretty epic,” Abed agrees easily, elevated heartbeat gradually returning to normal.

They do their familiar handshake. “So I don’t have to worry about you replacing me with Annie, right?”

He knows that Troy’s tone is joking, but he also recognizes from experience that his friend is sensitive and that some part of him is genuinely seeking reassurance. “I had fun with Annie, but she could never replace you,” he answers honestly. He can’t tell from Troy’s expression whether that assurance was sufficient, so he continues, “You and I are Reggie and the Inspector, Ron and Harry, Joey and Chandler. Annie and I are…”

Abed pauses for a second, collecting his thoughts.

Then another second.

By the time thirty seconds have elapsed, Troy is looking at him with concern. He attempts to shift his facial expression in a gesture of reassurance, but he feels his brow furrow again against his will. “Anomaly in the system,” he says quietly, not really to himself, but not really to Troy, either.

Before his friend can reply, Annie’s voice is ringing out. “Guys? I got groceries…and pizza…I could use a little help…”

Abed is grateful for his naturally neutral expression in the hours that follow. He and Troy help Annie with the groceries. Then his two roommates both look to him to select a movie. Still contemplating what happened earlier, he suggests _Raiders_ without conscious consideration. Annie gives him a small, pleased smile and he smiles back automatically, but internally the action only increases his distress and confusion.

He only half-watches the movie, but thankfully Troy and Annie don’t seem to notice. He doesn’t want to worry them. He doesn’t even know how he would put the problem into words. He’s never experienced this before, this inability to tie something to fiction. Usually he has a dozen analogies at his fingertips. It reminds him of when he and Jeff were hungover, but even then he still recognized the references and similarities, he just had difficulty retrieving the correct information. But when he tried to find an appropriate pairing to represent his relationship with Annie, he had been simply unable to do so.

Their initial framework had been something distant. He’d explained it to her at the time with a _Friends_ reference, figuring it was both fairly accurate and accessible for even the pop culture newbie. As time passed, they grew closer, but he assumed the essential basis of their connection remained. What had changed?

It had to be the time in the Dreamatorium. Until that point, he had understood Annie as an essentially different sort of being from him. She had been willing to meet him on his own terms in the past, but that was only for his sake, because she was a caring person. At heart, they were different people who would never truly understand each other or forge a particularly meaningful connection. But her implementation of the empathy program – and subsequent confessions – shook this conception to its core. Maybe Annie preferred to redecorate the apartment instead of recreating sci-fi masterpieces, but both of their actions reflected a need to understand and control the world around them to the best of their ability.

This put her on a different tier, then. Someone who understood him. The only person he’d previously assigned that label was Troy, but Annie isn’t like Troy. If he can understand how they’re different, he can find an appropriate fictional parallel and put the matter to rest.

He spends the rest of the night puzzling over that. By the time they’re all heading to bed, this is what he knows:

  1. Like Troy, Annie understands him on some level nearly all people seem incapable of.
  2. Unlike Troy, Annie has relatively few surface interests in common with him.
  3. Like Troy, Annie is someone he never gets tired of.
  4. Unlike Troy, her actions are surprising and often incomprehensible to him.
  5. Unlike Troy, Annie’s presence often prompts him to act out-of-character.



He’s not sure he’s any closer to figuring this out.

 

The next day is Saturday. Troy spends the day with Britta, a day which apparently entails taking her many cats to the vet. He doesn’t understand the appeal. Abed spends the morning examining his relationship with Annie in its natural context. He digs out his fanciest-looking notebook as a vague concession to the detective genre, but he refrains from costuming in the interest of capturing the most typical interactions.

 _Observation: Annie is a morning person,_ he writes. He already knew this, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to be thorough. She’s decided to make blueberry pancakes this morning. It’s common for Annie to cook breakfast on the weekends. He thinks it might be something she inherited from her family, but she never talks about them so he can’t confirm that hypothesis.

“Oh, wait, Abed! I’m sorry. You like chocolate chip, right?”

Her already-large eyes have widened into a Disney-esque expression, but she doesn’t seem to be using this to sway him intentionally. It still works, though. “Blueberry is fine,” he says, closing the notebook. He can transfer his mental notes later. “Do you need any help?” he asks.

( _Observation: I feel the need to demonstrate the success of Annie’s empathy teachings to her. Normally I’m resistant to attempts to change, but I want to show Annie I can change. Why?)_

Her eyes light up, and he feels a rush of something like attraction layered over exhilaration. It’s not a revelation that he’s attracted to Annie – she’s classically beautiful. He’s familiar with attraction. He can deal with that. The excitement at something so simple and normally uninteresting is surprising.

Annie is not a well-practiced cook, but she evidently enjoys it. Abed is capable enough, but unenthusiastic. Their combined efforts result in pancakes that are almost as good as chocolate chip.

She stacks them on a plate and puts her hand on his arm. “You want to eat these in front of the TV? I’ll grab the drinks and napkins if you pick a show.”

His gaze drifts down to where their skin is touching. It’s laundry day, so he’s wearing his short-sleeved pajamas. There’s no barrier between them. Annie looks at him curiously. He turns wordlessly and puts on _Friends_.

They eat in companionable silence. She laughs at some of the jokes. He doesn’t; he’s distracted, and he’s seen this episode too many times. It’s hard for him to pay attention to the TV instead of her. She cuts her pancakes into small, even pieces and drizzles the syrup with careful precision.

“Hey, remember when you said we were Chandler and Phoebe?” she asks, and for one horrifying moment he wonders if she can read his mind.

No, he’s just being transparent. Selecting media that make him think of the beginning of their friendship. “I don’t think that anymore,” Abed says honestly, looking at his food instead of her.

“Really? Who are we now?”

“I don’t know.”

He must sound distressed, because she leans over and takes his hand. He stills. “That’s okay,” she says, looking at him softly. “We can just be Annie and Abed.”

He wants to explain to her that it’s not okay, that he has no idea how to predict their future interactions without a blueprint. That this is too important to leave to chance and “winging it.”

Instead, he just stares at her hand in his. His stomach turns over. “I have to do some work,” Abed says abruptly, standing up. He takes their dishes to the sink and rinses them. He hopes she doesn’t notice him head for the Dreamatorium afterward instead of the blanket fort.

 

When he emerges hours later, he’s frustrated. Specifically, he’s frustrated with his past self.

Last night, his thoughts kept returning to point number five. Annie seemed to awaken something in him that was out of his usual character. With her, he was amenable to change. He invited her to move in without prior consideration. He made her part of his Star Wars reenactment before she had demonstrated her simulation abilities. He allowed her to change the functioning of the Dreamatorium and had rewarded her with vulnerability for doing so.

So he reran all of those scenarios in the Dreamatorium. Ideally, he would prevent himself from making the same decisions (future!Abed would leave his past self a warning note) and in that way better understand their impact. But his past self simply refused to cooperate. Even after the warning, he still waited in a room 26 hours for her. When given the opportunity, he invited her to move in. He was unable to stop her from breaching the Dreamatorium and incapable of withholding forgiveness afterward. Most of all, after repeated attempts, he could not resist making her his Leia again and again for no other apparent reason than that he _wanted_ to.

The imagined orange paint fades as he ends the final simulation. For perhaps the first time, he leaves the Dreamatorium feeling significantly worse than when he went in. Maybe he really should take up yoga instead, but he doubts that would lend him any insight on the Annie Situation.

After four hours of simulations, it had earned capitalization.

He stops short when he opens the door. Troy is standing outside, evidently waiting for him. “Where’s Annie?”

“Outside, with Britta. She wanted to show her pictures of the cats’ new collars.” Troy holds up a bandaged hand. “They scratched the crap out of me trying to put them on. Do you think it’s a sign that our relationship is doomed?”

“Not really. I don’t think her cats like anyone. If they’re a metaphor for anything, it’s probably her own defensiveness. You shouldn’t take it personally.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Troy frowns and looks him up and down. “What happened in the Dreamatorium?”

Abed doesn’t answer.

“Wait, does this have to do with yesterday? When we were talking about Annie and you shut down and got weird? Did she break you? I knew this was gonna happen!” Troy takes a step, like he’s about to go confront Annie right now.

“She didn’t break me,” he says tiredly. “I’ve just…encountered a problem. I don’t know how to conceptualize my relationship with Annie. I thought my behavior was a fluke, but I reran all the simulations and I can’t seem to change anything. The psychology experiment, the Dreamatorium, her moving in, Han and Leia…they’re all essential scenes, but I don’t understand the script.”

“Han and Leia?” he asks quizzically. “You guys watched _Star Wars_ without me?”

“No, it was during the paintball war. We had some in-character moments, culminating in a Big Damn Kiss. It shouldn’t be important, but for some reason I can’t avoid it, even if I warn my past self something terrible will happen.”

Troy is looking at him. His eyebrows are raised. His eyes are smiling but his mouth is in an o, like he’s gasping. “I don’t understand your expression,” Abed informs him.

He closes his mouth, but his eyes still look amused. “Sorry, buddy,” he says, in a tone that Abed doesn’t recognize. “That…explains a lot.”

“What do you mean?” But he doesn’t get an answer, because the apartment door opens to reveal Britta and Annie.

“Britta! Annie!” Troy says in an odd voice. “Hey, Abed and I were just talking about watching a movie tonight, all four of us. That…romantic comedy with…the guy and the girl..”

“ _13 Going on 30?_ ” Annie suggests with a gleam in her eye.

“ _Say Anything?”_ Abed asks, a beat behind.

“Romantic comedies are a patriarchal conspiracy?” Britta says cheerily.

“The one where they’re friends,” Troy clarifies.

“Oh, _When Harry Met Sally_?” Abed goes to the DVD shelf.

“That’s good too,” Annie says agreeably.

They all look at Britta, who puts her hands up. “Come on, you guys, what, am I going to say I hate Meg Ryan? What kind of monster do you think I am?”

Wordlessly, Abed goes to the DVD player and Annie to the microwave to make some popcorn. “Uh…a cute monster?” Troy offers.

It seems to pacify her.

 

Halfway through the movie, Abed begins to wonder about Troy’s motivations in choosing _When Harry Met Sally_. He’d assumed initially it was simply intended to please everyone, especially Britta, and give them an opportunity to brush hands when sharing popcorn. But considering their earlier conversation, he can’t help but think it might be meant as a message for him.

For a long time, Harry and Sally are best friends, even though Harry had said previously that men and women can’t be friends. Abed holds no such prejudice. It’s possible that is the answer to his quandary – he and Annie could also be best friends. Their relationship is different from his relationship with Troy, but maybe every close friendship should be different. He hasn’t had a best friend before Troy. He isn’t sure Annie’s had a best friend at all.

But they can’t be Harry and Sally, because Harry and Sally fall in love.

That didn’t stop them from being Han and Leia.

Was that what Troy was trying to tell him?

He looks at Annie. She’s sitting on the arm of his recliner again. Her eyes are bright and her cheeks are a little flushed. She looks at him curiously and he looks away, uncertain.

Whatever this is, he has to figure it out before it ruins all of his favorite movies.

Maybe he’s overthinking it. Troy seems too wrapped up in Britta to be sending him encoded messages. After the movie, Troy walks her back out to her car. He can hear them talking in the hall after the door closes. Annie is still sitting on the arm of his chair. The rest of the apartment seems impossibly big and them impossibly close now that Troy and Britta are gone.

“Did you figure out what was bothering you earlier?” she asks.

“No.”

“You will,” Annie says, and then she does something strange. She reaches out and brushes her hand across his face. It’s evidently intended to comfort him.

It does the opposite. His heart rate picks up. His skin feels warm. And that sense of overwhelming _want_ from earlier in the Dreamatorium returns.

He imagines leaning that little bit forward, taking her face in his hands like he’d done their freshman year. Brushing his lips against hers, gently and so quietly at first he can hear her breath, then more warmly and passionately. He imagines this so vividly at first he thinks it’s happened, but no, he’s still sitting paralyzed, looking at Annie’s big blue eyes.

Abed’s mouth is dry. He doesn’t even know what he says to her, but he makes some excuse and goes to bed. When Troy comes in, half an hour later, he pretends to be asleep, but his mind is whirling.

For once, figuring things out only made him feel worse.


End file.
